I’m newbie to kicad.My initial pcb routing attempts with 8.0 have shown me a push and shove issue .
So i decided to test the nightly builds. I have seen that the team fixed the push and shove issue .So it was good news .
Then i tried to manually route a test board using X , F to speed up work. The F press result is disappointing …
Routes are curving around pads and further more there is no gloss routes function. All has to be manually fixed .
I have seen too many issues in my tests . See bottom right route start and finish (Pinn9 , U2) made by F .
Are there any switches that can fix the routing behavior ?. Anything i’m missing ?.
Options to change the routing behavior are (mostly?) in PCB Editor / Route / Interactive Router Settings. The Interactive router is also continuously being tweaked, changed, updated. And 6 of your 7 trakcs look quite acceptable
If the “fake autorouter” does not work in some situations, then a [Ctrl + Z] to undo, then a new track with one or two manually placed points before ending with F may be the best option.
I mostly use X + F for simple / short tracks, and for that it works quite nicely (In the current stable V8.0.6). The algorithm (currently) is also too simple to route a whole selection (or footprint) in a single go. From what I understand, there is no interest among the current KiCad developers to develop a “full autorouter”, but the “fake autorouter” may evolve into a “guided autorouter”, in which a human does the intelligence (such as selecting a databus), and the computer does the fiddly bits (Escape routing from a BGA, connecting multiple wires to some far away destination, etc). And I completely agree. A complete autorouter is a complicated piece of software, needs many years of development before it becomes useful, while the interactive functions can be developed in small increments and be useful along the way.
